Global Warming

NASA has been monitoring the Earth's temperature to monitor global warming. As carbon dioxide levels increase in the earths atmosphere, the planet becomes warmer. There has been a global limit in trying to prevent global warming by setting a limit of how much the earth can heat up. They set the limit at two degrees celsius. Now scientist believe that this number is to high and will cause greater disasters. Such as a two degree increase will cause an ice free arctic. An ice free arctic will raise sea level in the tens of meters. If nothing is done to to prevent the rise in greenhouse gas emissions then the temperature is expected to rise three degrees celsius. This will cause short term events like increase in water vapor in the atmosphere and changes in cloud clover, which will rise or lower temperature. But remember this is only the small effects. Just imagine what the huge effects global warming has on our planet.

Fire In Space

In space fires burns a completely different way. On earth fire burns by heated gases rise from the fire which draws oxygen in and pushing combustion products out. In space it burns a completely different way by molecular diffusion by drawing oxygen to the flame and combustion products away from the flame at a rate of 100 times slower than the buoyant flow on earth. Also it burns at a lower temperature and uses less oxygen, which means that the material used to put out space fires need to be more concentrated. Well since March 2009, NASA has been conducting fire experiments in space on the international space station. It has conducted over 200 tests to better understand how the fire behaves in space or microgravity. After all this research and tests conducted NASA still does not understand how fire truly reacts in space. But the great thing that comes out of all this research is that this could potentially improve fire suppression systems on earth and space.

Looking For A Job?

Do you need a job? Dream of becoming an Astronaut? Well heres your big break. NASA is currently hiring astronauts. You can even apply online! this possibly could seem like a joke some might think but this is a completely serious matter. NASA needs astronauts to send into space but wait, theres a catch. NASA doesn't have it's own spaceship anymore since the space program ended in July 2011. What happens now is that NASA will send you up with Russians in their own space shuttle to the International Space Station for six months at a time. But not many trips will americans attend. Each seat an american astronaut aces on a Russian shuttle, America pays Russia $63 million. NASA hopes in about three to five years to build there own commercial rockets to send Americans astronauts to the Space Station. Eventually NASA will send astronauts to Mars and/or an asteroid but these trips are about a decade away. NASA needs about 55 new astronauts. For your resume you will need to have at least a bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, physical science or math, must learn Russian, be a U.S citizen, know basic physics, 20/20 vision and be between 5 feet 2 inches and 6 feet 3 inches. The job pays between $64700 and $141700 a year.

Water On Mars

In the ancient past of good old Mars, the fourth planter from the sun, has seem to have had water flowing under the martian surface. Clay deposits found on Mars revealed that surface of Mars had lakes and rivers in certain spots but only for brief periods of time. The reason scientist can prove this is because clay on the planet was shaped by the environment. These certain clays that the scientist are studying from Mars are terrestrial clay which is when water runs across various minerals, weathering and mixing them together as it carries them along. Many of the clay beds show features of dry rivers and lake beds and this indicates that there was running water on the planet. Well since there is no water on Mars currently where did it go??? Scientist have predicted that the atmosphere was thicker in the past and has thinned down since and not able to keep the water on the surface of Mars. Scientist also believe that it could have been trapped in carbonate rocks or ice. Another theory is that the water turned into clay by the intense weathering of volcanic-fored basaltic rock. But in conclusion, there was water on Mars but very very long ago.

That Dark Stuff Scientist Talk About

Dark matter is a crazy phenomenon is astrology because it is something that can not be proven that exists but scientist knows it is there. Dark Matter is a invisible force that supposedly  makes up 98% of the universe and can be detected through the gravitational pull on normal matter that makes up stars and planets. the dark matter gets darker when scientist come up with a new theory of "cold dark matter". Scientist have made a model to envision dark matter made up of cold, slow moving exotic particles that clump together because of gravity; this is how cold dark matter was discovered. This model proves in most situations correct until it is applied to mini dwarf galaxies where dark matter appears more spread out than it should be. Other scientist conducted a new study in calculating the mass distribution of two dwarf galaxies but these measurements completely contradict cold dark matter theory, making the problem worse. The model states that galaxies should be packed with dense clumps of dark matter  but it is spread out evenly in dwarf galaxies. Some researches have suggested that dark matter operates a different way by tending to spread out when it interacts with normal matter instead of contracting. In the end of this study scientist know less about this phenomenon then before.

Space Robot Gas Attendents

There are many satellites laughed into space to orbit earth for a specific job task. but after a couple of years they decommission because it has run out of fuel. Two companies are figuring out a way to give these out-of-commision million dollar satellites a second chance. The Canadian Company MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.(MDA) are manufacturing a satellite that will be not only be able to refuel other satellites but also repair, tow, and inspect. This satellite will orbit around and attach itself to another satellite by a paying customer. the attaching process could take weeks but once attached repairing, towing, inspecting and refueling could take just days. this is an amazing invention because this changes the face of technology in satellites. When a company designs a satellite they have to decide what is able to go in it because of how much fuel it uses.  But since their will be a satellite that ability to refuel it then it changes the amount of technology going into the designs of new satellites. But in business there is always competition and the competition is Vivisat. Vivisat is designing a mission extension vehicle(MEV) which docks onto a satellite but instead of transferring fuel it uses its own thrusters to keep the satellite working. Vivisat says that this is less of a risk then MDA satellite. These are of course great ideas because they save companies millions of dollars by preventing them to buy another satellite and it will cause less chance of collisions by moving satellites that can not be saved out of the way of perfectly good ones.

Armageddon!!

Imagine a huge asteroid is heading towards earth that could wipe out the human race. what would be your first thought of how to stop it? Ironically, technology would not be the issue because we have the technology to do so, but the biggest problem would be the human race coming together as one. We have many ways to prevent the asteroid from hitting earth and the main answer will be "Gravity Tractor." A "Gravity Tractor" is where NASA sends out a huge satellite and it will end up next to the asteroid and the gravitational pull from the satellite  will move the asteroid off course from hitting the earth. This could take up to a year to do but if it is to late to use this solution, this will cause us to shoot a nuclear missile at the asteroid. This could cause more harm because it could possibly break the huge asteroid into many pieces that could crash into earth. Well we have solutions to prevent an asteroid from hitting us, but humanity needs to come together as one first. We need to come to together because all of this technology is very expensive. The "Gravity Tractor" can cost from $500 million to $1 billion and that exceeds the U.S bank account. So another problem is when all of the nations put in money for this satellite or missile, who builds the missile or satellite? when we shoot the missile at the asteroid, where do we aim the missile at because it can influence more east or west. This huge asteroid isn't about if, it is about when because it is going to happen sometime no matter what, humanity just needs to come together as one to prevent an asteroid from destoying the human race.

Falling Satellite?!?!

NASA has reported that the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, will be plummeting to Earth in the next couple of days. This make it the largest satellite in thirty years to crash into Earth. NASA suspects the bus size satellite will crash into earth sometime Friday. The chances of any debris hitting anyone, anywhere is a 1-in-3200 chance because earth is mainly covered with ocean or unpopulated areas which makes the chances very low. But the chances that you will get hit is a completely different statistic of 1-in-several trillion. They say that the risk is very modest because the chances are very low. The Bus size satellite was a 750 million dollar research satellite that was launched in 1991 to study the ozone layer and earth upper atmostsphere. It was only suppose to last for three years but outlived that and was finally decommissioned in 2005.

Can We Travel In Time?

Can we travel in time? Well there are many theories on this from yes we can we just need the right equipment to its completely impossible and it will never happen. Scientist has proved that gravitational pull slows down clocks. So think about it like this, on earth your clock is moving one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi but an astronaut’s watch in space will move at double that speed. That is pretty crazy to think about that no one's time is the same at different elevations. So to get to the question can we travel in time? Scientist believes that if we travel at the speed of light we could make this happen. When you travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) time slows down. Scientist have said that if leave earth going the speed of light for one year that when you return to earth it would be 20 years later while you only aged one year. This happens because of Einstein’s theory of relativity. This theory is that time is relative to one person. Lets use the leaving the earth example. If Tom and Bill are both 20 years old and Tom leaves on a spaceship and travels at the speed of light for a year. It would feel like a year to both of them but Tom would return to earth and Bill would have aged 20 years to his 1 year. This happens because Tom’s clock moves slower than Bill’s because time slows down when traveling at the speed of light. The theory of relativity kicks in at while Tom is traveling at the speed of light it still feels like a year to him but what he does not notice is that his clock has slowed down. But to finalize the crazy thought of traveling in time is that we will never know until we are able to travel at the speed of light.

Space Junk

The space age began 54 years ago and already 22,000 objects of space junk is orbiting earth and that is only counting the ones NASA can track. Space junk can travel up to 17,000 miles per hour in earth's orbit. These can very threatening to human-carrying spaceships and satellites. How in such a short amount of time can the space programs from all around the world pollute the entire Earth's orbit? Scientist noticed that this could be a problem and came up with agreements to limit the amount of space junk. Overtime the space junk moves closer and closer to earth's atmosphere and burns up and is eliminated. This plan was working until two terrible events occurred. In 2009 two satellites collided and in 2007 Chinese anti-satellite weapon test used a missile to smash an aging weather satellite. This put 150,000 pieces of space junk into orbit at about 1 centimeter. Imagine 150,000 pieces of space debris traveling at 17,000 miles per hour. There are a few ideas of cleaning the space junk up by sending a satellite with nets to catch the debris like a "catcher's mitt.' Other ideas consist of harpoons, nets, tethers, magnets and an umbrella shaped device. 

Here is a picture of space junk orbiting the Earth.